Journal Entry: Bruni “Excerpt from a Treatise”
Leonardo Bruni was a Florentine humanist, and contributed to Florence flourishing during the Renaissance. So many of the great Italian Renaissance figures where from Florence, including Petrarch, Bruni, and Machiavelli. Also many of the famous Renaissance artists were from Florence including, Michelangelo, Raphael, and Botticelli. This shows how much of an epicenter Florence was for the Renaissance. I though it was interesting how the fall of the Florentine Republic which is in 1530, according to our notes, corresponds with the end of the Italian Renaissance in the late 15th century. The end of the Renaissance would have most likely affected the economy and may have had a hand in the Florentine
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This oration is an example of the modern outlook on the glory of man. Pico Mirandola believes that “there is nothing to be seen more wonderful than man.” This is in accordance with page 512 of our notes, which says, “(there) is no greater expression of beauty than the human body” and these two quotes are what inspired Michelangelo’s sculpture, David. The previous view of mankind before the Renaissance was that they were intermediary creatures, the king of the lower beings, and that man has the ability to reason. Mirandola was not satisfied with these explanations. Mirandola believed man’s beauty was due to God the Father, who created the whole universe and created man last to enjoy the world’s beauty and to wonder where it is from. Human beings beauty lies in the fact that God made is in His image. God told Adam that man has free will, and may do what he desires and can ordain the limits of nature. This is summarized on page 514 in our notes where it says that God told Adam, “you are confined by no bounds you set the limits of nature.” This shows that the text agrees with out notes and the idea that human beauty lies in God brings us back to the Renaissance theme of humanist Christianity. Mirandola than compares man to seeds “of all kinds and the germs of every way of life.” I believe he compares man to seed to say that man can grow into whatever it desires to and as man grow they change their surroundings in the same way that a field of seeds grows and becomes a field of plants on what was once a plain of